Belo Horizonte e a miragem do moderno: espaço urbano e educação pública

Abstract

This work intends to prove that, in the modernization project that took place in Minas Gerais in the last years of the 18th century, which included both agrarian and urban modernization in its goal, the project for the latter, represented by the construction of Belo Horizonte, was clearly connected with a project for modernizing the education. On the other hand, by investing in the building of schools and not only in strictly pedagogical questions, this project faced the urban space, and the school buildings particularly the ones called Grupos Escolares assumed themselves an educational role. Furthermore, the work intends to show that those two projects are connected not only with each other, but also with a more comprehensive modernization project, inasmuch as they were expected to provide the inhabitants of the city with a modern experience. This experience must be comprehended as the result of a civilizing process, since this new urban space and the reformed education both had the civilizing of the inhabitants of the city as a purpose. In the third decade of the last century, however, the connection between the two mentioned projects began to lose force, and the city started to be seen as a group whit separate parts that could be subjected to disconnected interventions no longer as a unity of elements that needed to respond equally to the demand for a genuine modern experience. In the other hand, there was evidently an abandon of the educational modernization project that intended to articulate the pedagogical and physical modernization of the schools with this new modernized urban space. The start point of this research is represented by the moment when the two modernization projects are most clearly connect, creating a dialogue that permits the comprehension of the elements that define them, of the characteristics and fundaments of each of them: between the last years of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The ending point of the research is the construction of the architectural complex of Pampulha, in the fourth decade of the last century, as its buildings are not connected with a more comprehensive urban space and there is no intention whatsoever that they will provide the inhabitants of the city with a experience of the modern, inasmuch as their location is isolated from the centre of urban life.